


Recovery

by PlaidAdder



Series: Wild About Harry [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Crossover, Episode Fix-it: s04e13 Journey's End, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Journey's End, Memory Loss, POV Donna, POV Harry Watson, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Recovery, Tenth Doctor Era, Waters of Mars, and not that much sherlock, but mostly who, did i mention it has christmas in it, most of season four, some of it's funny, some of it's not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna Noble doesn't remember that she saved the universe a few months ago. All she knows is that her life is going downhill fast. Alarmed by the gaps in her memory and what looks like the beginning of a drinking problem, Donna tries out a support group. Turns out it's not a good fit; but she does meet Harry Watson, who's got her own problems but can't resist a mystery. Why shouldn't Harry help Donna find out what she's forgotten? What's the worst that could happen?<br/>******</p><p>Basically, this is me hating the conclusion of Donna's story arc and fixing it in fanfiction. "Recovery" stands alone; you don't need to watch <i>Sherlock</i> or to have read "Empty Houses" and "Young Men Carbuncular" to enjoy it, though it does enhance the experience.</p><p>Also, I'm pretending that "The End of Time" never happened. If Steven Moffat can do it, so can I!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This contains spoilers for most of Season 4 of Doctor Who (2005) as well as the Christmas special "The Waters of Mars." It also contains a few mild spoilers for my Johnlock fic "Empty Houses." 
> 
> Although this was written after "Day of the Doctor," I elected to ignore it. My reasons for that are discussed in the notes.

_Unbelievable. You drive all that way to one of the drabbest streets in London thinking well, at least you’ll find parking in a place even the damned wouldn’t drive to but you finally get there and look. Choc a bloc with cars, both sides. And the one space, the one bloody parking space that opens up, is on the opposite side of the street. So you point at it, you say, right, I’ve got my eye on you, don’t you move, not out loud of course you’ve enough trouble these days with people thinking you’re mental and with you secretly thinking they may be right but you come back around the block and some vomit-colored scrapmobile is parked in your space and the exhaust is still warm in the tailpipe. And there she is, the cow who took your space, getting out of the car and slamming the door like she owns the place._

Donna rolled down the window and leaned into it. “Oi! Who do you think you are?”

The woman looked back at her. Short black hair, glasses with dark oblong frames, broad shoulders filling out the charcoal-gray suit she was wearing. Bit of a mannish silhouette. No makeup.

“Is that a trick question?” said the woman on the sidewalk.

“I saw that space first!” Donna shouted.

“That doesn’t give you title to it,” said the woman on the sidewalk, “and I’m late for a meeting. Goodbye.”

Off she trotted on her high-heeled boots. Donna flung a few choice remarks after her, then resigned herself to continuing the search.

Gramps hated it when she shouted at strangers. So did Mum. “What if you walk into a job interview one day,” Sylvia had said a hundred times, “and that person you told off is sitting there on the other side of the desk?”  Mum seemed quite pleased with her little thought experiment; but Donna was not impressed by it. Fat chance of that happening. Fat chance of her having a job interview, with anyone, ever, any more.

By the time Donna reached the building she was properly angry. It was bad enough she’d been brought to this pass. Now universe had to take away her parking space. Fine. She’d go in there just to show the universe it couldn’t stop Donna Noble.

It was mad, though, standing there in that big grey room with the mirrors all round the walls. Looked like a dance studio. No dancing in there now, just a dozen folding chairs set up in a circle and a table against the corner holding up the inevitable teapot, sugar, and milk. There was an old man in a woolen waistcoat there, setting out some chocolate biscuits on a tray. A few other people were clustered in another corner talking. A young man in a blonde ponytail was holding court there, with a young girl gazing up at him and hanging on his words. And there was a young-ish man--forties probably—getting up out of one of the chairs to accost her.

Donna froze. There was nothing unusual about the man himself. He was bald as an egg, shaped a bit like a potato, but with a kind enough face. It was just that once someone spoke to her, it would be harder to turn and run if the need arose.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Jimmy. Are you here for the meeting?”

Donna just nodded.

“Take any chair you like,” said Jimmy. “There’s water over there. Shall I introduce you to people or would you rather just wait till we begin?”

“I’ll just sit for now, thanks,” Donna said.

Where’d all the meek come from all of a sudden, Donna wondered. It’s not as if these people have anything to lord over you.

The chair was too small and too light. She fidgeted while the other chairs began to fill up. She found herself looking at everyone’s shoes. Men’s and women’s, battered and new, and that one pair of black boots.

Donna tried to glance up without making it obvious.

Yes. Those boots belonged to the woman who’d taken her parking space. Well wasn’t that wizard.

The woman who’d stolen her space caught Donna looking at her. She didn’t seem too pleased about it.

Donna was considering escape plans when Jimmy sat down and cleared his throat.

“Hello everyone,” said Jimmy.

Donna looked up. Everyone else was saying hello back like they knew him. Like they all knew each other. Like she was the only one in the room who didn’t already have a best friend.

Get a grip, Donna. This isn’t mixed infants and you’re not here to make friends.

“We’ve two new people today,” he said, “so let’s start with introductions. My name’s Jimmy, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hello, Jimmy!”

Oh God, they really did that. Just like on television. It was exactly as horrible as Donna had imagined.

“Hello,” said the woman who’d stolen Donna’s parking space. “I’m Harry. It’s been eight months, three weeks, and four days since my last drink.”

They all said hello. And then the twentysomething three chairs over who was playing with her long blonde ponytail and trying to look bored suddenly perked up and said, “Oh. No. Wait. You’re never. Seriously. Are you? Are you really Harry W—“

“Alicia,” Jimmy said sharply. “No last names.”

“Oh she may as well,” said the parking thief. “I’ve been to five different meetings this week and someone’s recognized me every time. Yes, fine, everyone, I’m Harry Watson, and thanks to my brother and his blog and the tabloids, I will never be anonymous anywhere, ever again.”

“Well I’ve never heard of you,” Donna snapped.

Donna couldn’t tell if they were all laughing with her at Harry or the other way round.

“Thank God,” Harry said. “I can be anonymous to _someone_ here, even if it _is_ you.”

Donna was sorting through possible snappy comebacks when Jimmy turned to her.

“Why don’t you introduce yourself,” said Jimmy, looking at Donna.

“That’s not fair, Jimmy,” said the older man in the waistcoat. “Don’t call on her just because she spoke out of turn. It’s not your classroom.”

“I’ll fight my own battles, thank you,” Donna said. “The name’s Donna, since you ask, and…”

She trailed off. She was starting to feel the beginnings in her stomach, the little flurry that warned her of panic coming on.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” said Harry. “It’s your first meeting.”

How do you know, Donna thought, bristling. I could have been at fifty of these. I could be a raging dipsomaniac of twenty years’ standing who crawled out of a whiskey-soaked ditch this morning and staggered up the stairs for my very last chance at redemption. You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me, other than that I have a keen eye for a good parking space and that I’ll _never_ forget you stole it on me.

Never forget.

Donna put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. The others went on with their introductions. Donna stared down at the floor, feeling, for once in her life, at a loss for words.  

“Well,” Jimmy said, after everyone had gone. “Who’d like to start?”

There was a silence. Donna felt the panic growing. She felt that if she didn’t do something, now, then she might just…start jumping up and down and babbling, or charge across the room and crash headfirst into one of the mirrors, or something else equally mad.

“Donna?” Jimmy said.

Give it to Jimmy, Donna thought. The man can smell fear.

Donna glanced at Harry. A burning desire not to be shown up in front of the parking thief came to her rescue.

“Right,” Donna said. “Well. I’m—I never had a problem, you know, I’d go out with my mates on the weekend, have a couple, I’d wake up hung over on the odd Saturday but it was fine, it was really…it was fine. I mean my Mum, if there were any _possible_ way she could have got after me about drinking she would have discovered it. My grand-dad never said anything to me about it either and if he were worried he’d always say, he just finds ways to do it that aren’t so—you know—“

“Aggravating,” said Alicia.

Donna nodded. She took a big gulp of air. Talking faster seemed to make it come out easier.

“I started, a few months ago, I started having these terrible dreams, you know, nightmares with knobs on, in 3-D with the most amazing special effects, and I’d wake up just feeling like…like the whole room was just a big black cloud. I’d be at work and the cloud of misery would follow me there and it would follow me back home, and I’d stay up late as I could but soon as I lay down there it’d be, the great floating misery cloud of Gallupatoria Prime waving at me, hello, Donna, did you miss me? And then I worked out that if I had a good stiff drink right before I went to bed, I wouldn’t get the nightmares.”

The older man in the waistcoat let out a kind of sympathetic groan. Alicia patted him on the shoulder.

“So. Brilliant plan, right, have a drink and go to sleep and no nightmares. Only the nightmares came back after a while so then it took _two_ drinks and now I just take the bottle to bed with me and then one day I realized, I mean I guess I’d always known but I actually sat down, and thought about it, and realized…”

Donna stopped. Her throat was tight and her eyes were beginning to sting. She looked at the old man in the waistcoat. The look of pity on his face made it worse. She looked at Alicia. Seeing those big blue eyes looking so sad did not help. She looked at Harry.

Harry said, “Realized what?”

Right, Donna thought, since you are not gushing pity all over me maybe I will forgive you just a little.

“I realized,” Donna repeated, and then drew breath to go on. “That…there are these big stretches of time that I just…don’t remember. Going back to Christmas, I mean not last Christmas although I don’t remember much of that either but the Christmas before. I don’t remember _anything_ about the Christmas before last.”

“But…” Alicia said. “How could you not remember Christmas before last? There was this big star in the sky that started shooting--”

“Yes,” said the older man, pointing a trembling finger at her. “Yes, and then the Thames just disappeared. It was dry for a week. I thought good God, this global warming is getting completely out of hand. You know Christmas is just not what it used to be--“

“Tell me about it,” Jimmy said. “I daren’t even put up a tree now.”

And they were off. All of them jabbering away about Christmases past, and giving Donna a tension headache. Donna blinked her eyes trying to get the tears out of them.

“Everyone!”

Harry’s voice, evidently, was loud enough to stop a conversation.

“Donna was talking,” Harry said. “I don’t think she’s finished.”

“Isn’t she?” said the man with the ponytail. He was younger than Jimmy, with blue eyes and a decent chin, and just from the sound of his voice you knew he sat in a lot of cafes drinking a lot of coffee and thinking he was God’s own gift. “I thought she’d gone quiet, but I suppose I just dreamed it.”

The old man in the waistcoat snorted. “Sebastian, have a bit of respect for the new girls.”

“What about respect for us?” Sebastian retorted. “It’s all very well for Ginger here to natter on, she’s not clever enough to perceive the threat.”

Donna swung on him, but Sebastian was looking at Harry.

“I’m a ‘threat’?” Harry demanded.

“A threat to confidentiality,” said Sebastian.

“Well now,” said Jimmy. “I suppose that is something to consider. It hadn’t occurred to me, but—“

“ _How_ am I a threat to confidentiality?” Harry said.

Sebastian met her glare. “How do we know what we in here say won’t end up on Dr. Watson’s blog?”

“How do we know you’re not hiding a webcam in your coffee cup?” Harry shot back. “You walk in the room and you trust the people in it, that’s how this works, or that’s how it’s supposed to work. Just because I have the misfortune—“

“It’s a legitimate question, Harry,” said Jimmy, in a falsely soothing tone that set Donna’s teeth on edge. “There’s plenty on that blog about _your_ recovery—“

“Because it came into Sherlock’s story,” Harry said, turning on him. “Otherwise John wouldn’t have bothered. John doesn’t blog about anything unless there’s a bit of Sherlock in it somewhere and he doesn’t blog about my meetings ever because I don’t fucking _tell him about them_.”

“Harry,” Jimmy said serenely, “in this meeting we don’t allow language that is disrespectful to others.”

 “It’ll be a short bloody meeting then,” said Donna.

Harry failed to suppress a laugh.

Jimmy didn’t think it was funny. “If you ladies can’t follow the ground rules—“

“Oh,” Harry snapped. “So Sebastian can accuse me with impunity, but when I defend myself I’m being disrespectful.”

“Sebastian was voicing a legitimate concern,” Jimmy said. “It’s not your fault, but your notoriety does introduce a—“

“I’m _notorious_?” Harry spat.

“Harry, I don’t think your attitude is at all conducive to—“ Jimmy replied.

Harry cut him off with some very disrespectful language. Donna looked down at her lap so they wouldn’t see her laughing.

“This is exactly what I’m talking—“ Sebastian began.

“I’m going!” Harry shouted. “All right? I’m going. Enjoy your space. It will henceforth be safe from me.”

Harry walked angrily toward the door, heels clicking all the way, and tore it open. It slammed behind her. Jimmy resumed his seat. Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now then,” Jimmy said. “We can get back to the main point. Donna, since you are new, it _is_ appropriate for you to have a little more time than our ground rules might otherwise allow. So is there anything else you’d like to share?”

Donna lifted her head, as tragically as she could.

“Oh yes,” Donna said. “Thank you _so_ much, that’s _so_ nice of you. I _do_ appreciate your taking the time to listen to me, and I just want to say, to you and Sebastian in particular…”

Donna let her voice tremble and brushed away an imaginary tear with a graceful, ladylike motion of which Sylvia would have been proud. Jimmy leaned forward, with that condescending kindness. “It’s all right, Donna. You’re safe here. You can let it out.”

“Thanks,” Donna said, sniffling. “I just want to say…with the greatest respect…that you’re both gigantic _wankers_ and you and your ground rules can get stuffed.”

Donna punctuated the sentence with what she judged to be the appropriate gesture. Over Jimmy’s gasp, Donna called out, “Don’t get up, gentlemen. I’ll find my own way out.”

When Donna got back to the parking space Harry had stolen from her, the Honda Civic was still there. The doors were closed, the windows were up, and Harry was just sitting in the driver’s seat, staring into the space ahead of her. Donna rapped on the window.

Harry didn’t look pleased, exactly, but she did roll it down.

“Is it always like that?” was the first thing that came into Donna’s head.

“No,” Harry said, with a sigh. “That was special.”

Harry put the keys in the ignition.

“Don’t give up, Donna,” Harry said, earnestly. “Find another meeting. It really does help. I mean it will help with the bedtime drinking. It won’t help at all with the memory loss.”

Donna blinked. “It won’t?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

A car pulled up even with the one parked behind Harry, pointedly flashing its turn signal.

“Look,” Harry said. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk? There’s a decent little used bookshop nearby where they serve coffee.”

“All right.”

Harry got out of the car, slammed the door, and chirped the auto-lock. The driver who’d been waiting for the space threw his hands up in annoyance. Donna gave him a two-fingered salute, and they headed down the street.

“So what do you mean, it won’t help?” Donna began. “Why not?”

“Because based on what you said at the meeting,” Harry said, “you’re not actually having blackouts.”

“I beg your pardon, I most certainly am,” Donna replied. “I am having platinum-class twenty-four carat exclusive luxury blackouts. The things I forget are the things that _everyone_ remembers. Like a big spaceship flying over London and sucking up little dancing fat creatures into the sky, or poison gas belching out of the tailpipe of every car on earth, or…I mean I thought at first those things just hadn’t actually happened and everyone was having me on. I did some research,” Donna went on, before Harry could respond. “Mind you it wasn’t easy. Mum and Grand-dad won’t let me at the computer. I mean it’s all right because their monitor’s crap and it gives me a terrible headache anyway—but anyhow, those things happened all right. I just…forgot them all.”

“I’m not saying your memory loss isn’t real,” Harry said, as they fell into step together. “I’m just saying it probably wasn’t caused by drinking. You’ve only been drinking hard for the past couple of months, you said, because of the nightmares, and these gaps in your memory go back long before then. With alcohol-related memory loss,” she said, in a suddenly clinical tone, “it’s not that you lose memories you already had. The alcohol interferes with the brain chemistry and prevents you from forming memories in the first place. A blackout blacks out what happened _while_ you were drunk. It doesn’t black out what happened before or afterward.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Donna said.

“I’m interested in the subject.” 

They had reached the bookstore. Donna stared through the window at the dusty display of faded hardcovers.

“You don’t have memory loss because you’re drinking,” Harry said. “It’s more likely that you’re drinking because you have memory loss.”

Harry pushed the door open.  Donna hesitated on the threshold. Something about the shop bothered her. Too many antique lamps and too much dark paneling and too many books and too few people.

“Don’t you like it?” Harry said. “We can go somewhere else.”

“No,” Donna said, steeling herself. It would be silly not to go in, just because she didn’t like the look of the shadows on the floor.

*          *          *

Maybe, Harry reflected as she watched Donna enter Harry’s number into her mobile, the weird in her life was not _all_ Sherlock’s fault. This morning she had left the house thinking the most exciting thing that would happen to her all day would be a trip to Kitchen Sink for a new mandoline. Now she had just agreed to become the sponsor of a ginger-haired lunatic named Donna. Harry searched her soul for the explanation.

It wasn’t that she fancied Donna. At least she didn’t think so. She’d never gone for redheads, or for straight women.

Donna put her phone down on the table. It was surrounded there by a spatter of other objects that had more or less exploded from Donna’s purse—tissues, car keys, mascara, half-open roll of Mentos, iPod. Harry’s own phone lay in the midst of the debris, winking up at her with a sigh. It wasn’t sure about getting involved in Donna’s mess, and neither was Harry.

“So I can call you just—whenever? I mean any time, day or night?” Donna said. “Can I really?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Within reason. Don’t call me at three o’clock in the morning because you want my opinion on which of the lads in One Direction is the cutest.”

“Course not,” Donna said, with a laugh.

“But if you need help,” Harry said. “If you’re about to start drinking…or if you’ve remembered something and you need help dealing with it. Or whatever. Call me. Don’t think twice about it. Someone did it for me. I’m happy to do it for you.”

The red hair danced a little as Donna’s head drew back slightly. It was as if her neck and shoulders were suspicious and a little wary, even though her face was nothing but pleased. And there it is, Harry thought. It’s as if there’s two of her, phasing in and out. One of her sits there rattling off the kind of vapid gossip you wouldn’t put up with for five minutes at a party. But watch her eyes and her hands and there’s the other one, the woman who knows something’s wrong and thinks she might be dying of it. It was as if a tragic actress had been cast in some cartoonish comedy, and she couldn’t crack a joke without breaking your heart.

Donna’s phone went off. She answered it without skipping a beat.

With a sigh, Harry glanced around the bookstore, trying not to think about what happened the last time she’d let herself become intrigued by a mysterious stranger. The place was pretty deserted, except for that man in the pinstripe suit and the tennis shoes standing by the bookcase and pretending to look at that volume of Shakespeare.

“I don’t understand,” Donna was barking into the phone. “I haven’t been paying storage fees. I don’t have anything in storage. I mean if it’s about those blouses I dropped off in October, I haven’t forgotten them, I just haven’t got round to—“

Donna looked down at the table, frowning at it.

“Right,” she exploded, with a swing of her head. “Then I’ll just come down right now and we’ll see who’s mistaken.”

There was a slightly alarmed babbling noise from the phone, which Donna cut off with the touch of a button.

 Donna dropped the phone on the table and heaved an aggrieved sigh. “Drycleaners,” she said. “See the way they run those places, it’s a miracle you ever get anything back. They’ve put my ticket on someone else’s order or something and now they think it’s my problem. Well they are sadly mistaken.”

Donna began shoveling things back into her purse. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to go down and get them sorted before they close. Ta, Harry, I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Harry nodded. “Only not at that meeting.”

“Oh, you think?” Donna said, with an ironic tilt of her head. “I’d pull off my own head and eat it before I ever set foot in _there_ again.”

Harry laughed. Donna laughed too. For a moment, Donna looked like one whole person.

Harry put out a hand toward her.

“Don’t go yet,” Harry said. 

Donna looked at her.

“No, I don’t mean it that way—look, I’m not attracted to you—I mean—“

“Oh, it’s mutual,” Donna snapped.

“It’s just—“ Harry leaned forward and dropped her voice. “There’s a man over there by the bookcase in the Drama section. He came in here about ten seconds after we did and he’s been planted there the whole time, pretending to read while he eavesdrops on us. Now I don’t know if he’s following you or following me, but whichever of us he’s stalking I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him get either  of us alone, do you?”

Donna’s eyes narrowed slightly. “This man you’re talking about,” she said, without looking round. “Is he a long streak of nothing in a brown pinstriped suit?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, surprised.

“Looks like a hedgehog perched on the end of a pencil?”

“Yes,” Harry said, though she considered the hedgehog part unfair. She’d had a cut not unlike his, in her youth.

“Oh.” Donna waved a hand dismissively. “That’s just Tim.”

The man by the bookcase glanced up, then returned to the pages with even more furious concentration.

Harry tried to dismiss from her mind an image of John Cleese wearing a fake beard and a pair of ram’s horns.

“Tim?”

“Yeah,” Donna said, shrugging on her jacket. “Stands for The Invisible Man. You see him out of the corner of your eye sometimes, but then when you try to look right at him he disappears. My grand-dad says it’s an optical illusion. You know, like when you stare at those red and green dots on the page and then when you look at a blank wall you see a picture of a flamingo. He says optical illusions run in the family. He says when he was in the army there used to be a mermaid with a green tail he’d see out the corner of his eye, hanging about the mess hall. His mates gave him a terrible time over it. So no worries. Tim’s not going to jump you in a dark alley. He’s not real.”

Harry decided not to say any of the things that came into her head. Instead she looked back toward where the man had been lurking. The Shakespeare volume lay on top of the bookcase. He was gone.

Harry turned back to Donna. But Donna’s eyes were suddenly blank, reflective, as shallow as her smile.

“Bye,” she said, with a cheery wave. “Sorry to dash, but the drycleaners closes in half an hour. Ta!”

Harry watched Donna bustle out the door. She was moving fast; and she wasn’t looking at her feet. All the same, she didn’t step in a single shadow.

With a sigh, Harry turned back to the table to gather her own things.

She found herself staring into a pair of piercing brown eyes.

By the time Harry realized that the man in the pinstripe suit was now sitting in Donna’s chair, her heart was already going a mile a minute. She grabbed for her mobile.

“Don’t,” said the man, putting his hand over her phone. “Please. If I’m not gone in ten seconds you can phone the police but right now, please, for Donna’s sake, just listen.”

Harry opened her mouth, but he went on in that low, urgent, strangely compelling voice.

“I know you think you’re helping Donna but you’re not. She can’t remember. She _mustn’t_ remember. If she recovers those memories she will _die_.”

He said it as if he believed it. And as if it mattered more to him than anything else in the world.

“Your ten seconds are up,” said Harry.

The man lifted his hand.

Harry locked eyes with him. Slowly, she picked up the phone and put it in her pocket.

The man in the pinstripe suit leaned back in the chair, running one hand through his upstanding hair. He braced one foot against the table and let out a sigh. Relief, maybe, though tension was still humming in every muscle of his wiry body.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” said the man. “You didn’t get _too_ many words in edgewise, but I do have just a tiny inkling that you don’t quite trust the police.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Harry said, “or where you came from; but I do know that if you think that you can drop in out of a clear blue sky and start telling me what to do, you are wrong.”

His eyes widened in alarm. “I don’t believe it,” he murmured. “There’s _two_ of them.”

“Look, obviously you know more about Donna's situation than I do,” Harry said, leaning forward and dropping her voice to a low murmur. “I can tell you one thing, though. I wouldn’t have met her where I met her if she weren’t falling to bits.”

“And you’re the one who’s going to make her whole again,” the man flung out bitterly. “Even if it kills her.”

“I've only known Donna for about an hour,” Harry said. “But even I can tell she’s not herself at the moment. And so can she.”

The man in the pinstripe suit looked down at the table, took a deep breath, and then raised his head. His eyes looked madder than ever.

“I understand the need, Harry,” said the man. “I do. I know why you’re drawn to her. Believe me. But you have no idea what you’re dealing with. Stay away from her. Go find someone else to save.”

“Or else what?” Harry replied, trying not to let anyone know her heart was racing.

“You should know this about me, Harry Watson,” he fired back, biting off each word. “I don’t believe in second chances. This is your one warning. Leave Donna Noble alone.”  

Harry leaned over the table. So did the man on the other side. He was apparently trying to compel her obedience by the sheer force of his burning gaze.

“Why should I?” Harry said, quietly. “Have you? ‘Tim’?”

He was on his feet and at the door before Harry could even stand up. She bolted to the exit; but when she poked her head out the door he was nowhere in sight.

Damn, Harry thought, as she looked up and down the empty street. For a man who’s not real, he certainly can run.

*          *          *

Donna struggled through the front door, hauling the garment bag over one shoulder. Awkward _and_ heavy. It’s like if you went to an Inconvenience Store and asked them for the worst thing you could possibly have to drag out of a small car by yourself up the walk and into a small house, this is exactly what the lady behind the counter would hand you.

Sylvia was fussing in the kitchen, wiping down the countertops for probably the tenth time that day. Wilfred sat at the table, hands wrapped round a mug of tea, trying not to listen to her.

“…and she wouldn’t even say what she needed the car for. Now I call that rude.”

“I’d call it worrisome,” Wilfred replied. “Last time she…”

He looked up and saw Donna standing there in the entrance. He couldn’t see the garment bag, which was hanging down behind Donna’s back; but as always, he could smell trouble in the wind.

“Hello, dear,” he said.

“Hello Gramps,” Donna said, putting just a little extra hiss in the ‘s.’

Donna took one hand off the enormous bag, dug the car keys out of the pocket of her cardigan, and threw them onto the kitchen table.

“The car’s back,” Donna called toward Sylvia, whose back was now turned to her.  

Donna moved to the cupboards to take out a mug for her own tea. The black garment bag trailed behind her, rustling like a snake in dried grass. Neither of them mentioned it.

“How was your day, sweetheart?” Wilfred asked, apprehensively.

“Oh,” Donna said, turning around and leaving the cupboard door open behind her. “Nothing special. Same old, same old. Got thrown out of a meeting. Gave my number to a stranger. Went to the drycleaners’. Found out I’m _married_!”

Donna flung the garment bag onto the floor of the kitchen. It lay their, splayed like a fallen corpse, crinolines whispering amongst themselves as they subsided. Through the cellophane window in the front of the bag the sequins shimmered. Across the cellophane there were words printed in fading red ink. _Precious Memories, Preserved Forever._

Sylvia seemed to have frozen with one hand over her mouth. Wilfred gripped his mug tighter; his beard trembled as his chin began to quiver. They knew. They both knew. Of course they knew.

“This wedding dress,” Donna said, trying her hardest not to shout because Wilfred looked fragile enough already, “has been in storage at High & Dry for _two bloody years._ I brought it to them two Christmases ago and I paid storage fees, every month. Then today they call me because the card I set up for automatic pay expired. And I’m all oh, no, you _must_ be mistaken, that can’t possibly have been _my_ card, I don’t _have_ a wedding dress because _I’ve never been married!_ ”

Wilfred groaned. He put his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands.

“Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice, Donna,” Sylvia snapped, glad to take shelter in a familiar argument. “I won’t be spoken to like that in my own kitchen.”

Donna tried her hardest to think of a really blistering comeback. But with the knot in her stomach and the pain in her heart and the ache in her head all she could do was burst into tears.

“Who am I married to?” Donna cried. “Where is he? Why don’t I remember him? Why won’t anyone _tell me anything?_ ”

“Oh sweetheart,” Wilfred said, lifting his hands in distress. “I’m so sorry. But we can’t. We just can’t!”

“Dad,” said Sylvia, in her most ominous tone.

“The doc—I mean—your physician, he said we can never tell you about that. It would hurt you, sweetheart.” His tears were flowing freely now, and his hands couldn’t settle. “It would…it would be bad for you.”

Donna jabbed a finger at the mass of white fabric sprawled on the kitchen floor.

“ _This_ isn’t bad for me?” she shouted, annoyed to hear her own voice breaking. “ _This_ doesn’t hurt? Have you ever tried to explain to the man at the drycleaner’s why it is that you don’t remember your own wedding? Because I have, and let me tell you, on a scale of one to ten, one being a sunny day on the beach in Ibiza and ten being a spike through the head, _that’s_ a bloody _eleven!_ ”

Wilfred didn’t answer, except to close his eyes and shake his head. She knew she was breaking his heart. It only made her angrier.

“Well come on now, Dad,” Sylvia said, putting the sponge down and turning to face her, bracing herself against the counter. “I think she’s healthy enough to hear about it now, don’t you?”

Wilfred looked at Sylvia. Donna could actually see the crack in his heart get wider.

“His name was Steven,” Sylvia said. “Stocky little bloke with curly blonde hair. A landscape gardener. You met him one Sunday—“

A wailing sound burst out of Wilfred.

“You’re lying,” Donna said, as she swallowed her own tears. “You’re making it all up. Why are you lying to me?” The tears came right back out. “Why, Mum? Why are you doing this to me?”

There was a clatter from Wilfred. He burst out of his chair, hobbling out of the kitchen as fast as his joints would let him. Still staring at Sylvia, who still wore her patented maddeningly calm and vaguely disappointed expression, Donna heard Wilfred’s agitated but hesitant footsteps down the corridor, and heard the door to his bedroom slam.

Sylvia was still looking at her. But she was not about to answer the question.

Burning with rage and grief and an obscure sense of shame, Donna bent down, grabbed the garment bag by the neck, and dragged it like a dead deer toward Wilfred’s bedroom.

She put her ear to the door. Inside she could hear him sobbing. Great big heartbroken sobs, interspersed with shuddering gasps and pitiful little wheezes.

Donna knocked on the door with her free hand. “Gramps? Are you all right?”

From the other side of the door, she heard him clearing his throat. “I’m all right, sweetheart. Don’t mind me. I’m fine, love.”

“You’re not fine,” Donna said.

“Just leave me to myself,” Wilfred said. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Gramps, I’m not angry,” Donna said. The anger had melted as soon as she heard him crying.  Now all she felt was a crushing sadness.

“I love you, sweetheart,” Wilfred wailed, through the door. “Your Mum loves you. We’re only doing what’s best for you. I know you can’t understand.”

“Did he die?” Donna asked, leaning her head against the door and closing her eyes. “Just tell me. The man I married. Did he die horribly, or something?”

“Please, Donna,” Wilfred cried. “I can’t talk about it, sweetheart.”

“Can’t you even tell me how we met?” Donna pleaded.

Another stifled sob. “Sweetheart, I can’t tell you anything about him. It’s too close to—it’s all too involved with—it’s off limits, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She couldn’t bear to hear him cry any more.

Donna turned away from the door. She looked down at the bag trailing behind her.

Back in the kitchen, Sylvia was standing over the sink, one hand braced on her hip and one covering her mouth. She wasn’t going to cry. Hair and smile always perfect. That was Sylvia.

Donna grabbed the car keys off the kitchen table.

“Oh really,” Sylvia snapped, turning around. “Where are you going _now_?”

“Guess,” Donna hissed at her. “It’s so much fun, guessing. Tell you what. You try to guess where I’m going, and I’ll try to guess what the hell I’ve been doing with my life, and we’ll see who gets it right first.”

“Donna,” Sylvia cried. Her voice was high, and brittle, and—for her—sad. “Donna, it’s all right, just tell us where you’re going and who you’ll be with and when you’re coming back.”

The old trifecta. Like she was fourteen.

“I’m going to find someone who will tell me the truth,” Donna shouted, kicking the front door open. “And I’m coming back when I know what it is.”

*          *          *          *

“Well,” Harry said. “This is unexpected.”

Liberated from its bag, the wedding dress hung from a hook on the back of Harry’s bedroom door. Donna had known, as soon as she saw it, that it was her own dress. She’d seen that exact design on a mannequin at Chez Alisse three years ago and decided she would be married in it, when she had someone to marry. Donna didn’t need to try it on to know it had been altered to fit her shape. It had been altered a lot more than that. The hem and the crinoline looked as if someone had pulled them out of a paper shredder just in time. The skirt and bodice were striped with tiny irregular white streaks. The beading was moulting; every few seconds she could hear another tiny little ball patter onto the floor.

She and Harry stared at it in silence. The more Donna tried to remember wearing it, the more her head hurt.

“It’s giving me a headache,” Donna said.

“Me too,” Harry replied. “But then that always happens to me if I look directly into the patriarchy for too long.”

Donna turned, wanting to laugh. She winced instead. Harry’s brows contracted in concern.

“Would you like…an aspirin, or anything?” Harry said.  

Donna tried to shake it off. “I’m fine.”

“Well, I’ve worked out one thing,” Harry said. “You are not actually married.”

“I’m not?”

“No. There’s no legal record of it. I mean you must have got close,” Harry said, as her eyes were drawn back to the dress, “but the marriage was obviously never completed.”

So. No husband out there. Not even an imaginary or forgotten one. It was hard to take. She had felt sure, somehow, that there was _someone_ she had lost. 

“It’s just…it’s so _frustrating!_ ” Donna said, as her hands sprang into the air. “That dress knows more about my life than I do. _It_ was there. _It_ remembers. If only…”

Donna clenched her hands and let out a growl of thwarted rage.

“If just seems like…” Donna said, walking toward it and touching it hesitantly. “I ought to be able to…I mean if I were _clever_ , instead of a stupid cow who can’t hold a job, I could just…I could look at all the tears and stains and everything and work out how they happened and from that you could sort of…work backward…and you’d eventually have it all, wouldn’t you? You’d know the whole story.”

Donna touched the bodice, gently. She felt bad for the dress. It had been through so much.

“But I’m not clever,” Donna said. “It’s a mad idea anyway. I mean why would anyone _really_ clever go round wasting his time looking at old dresses and shoes and hats and things?”

She turned to see why Harry wasn’t answering. Harry was on the phone, one hand held up for silence as she waited for someone to pick up.

“It’s Harry,” she said, into the phone. Then Harry let out a short sigh and rolled her eyes. “Yes. I know you know. Are you bored?”

There was a murmur from the phone.  

“Well, Sherlock,” Harry said, “that’s about to change.”

*          *          *

“Your friend,” Donna whispered, glancing at the dark-haired young man kneeling down by the hem and sniffing at it. “Is he…I mean is he…you know…” Donna tapped her temple with one red-nailed finger and whispered, “Bonkers.”

Harry’s eyes flicked toward the man, who was now minutely inspecting some broken threads on the bodice.

“Opinion is divided on the subject,” she answered.

“Opinion is divided on _every_ subject, Harry,” the young man snapped. “As long as Scotland Yard stands, there will always be _some_ idiot in the wrong, and I, as you know, am always right.”

The young man reached into the pocket of the tweed coat he’d thrown on the floor and pulled out the biggest magnifying glass Donna had ever seen.

He picked up the hem and scrutinized it through the glass. Donna watched him run the glass over every inch of the fabric, his lips moving gently as he murmured a running commentary that only he could hear. Donna could see the muscles in his narrow shoulders and wiry arms through the thin fabric of his purple shirt. An odd looking bloke, and too skinny really, but the dark curls and the bright eyes did set your mind wandering, and narrow as his bum was you couldn’t say it wasn’t interesting.

None of that, however, helped with her headache, which was getting suddenly worse.

Finally, the young man folded up the glass, stuffed it into one of those evidently capacious coat pockets, and turned to face Donna.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “the dress was cleaned and mended before being stored, so there’s comparatively little left to interpret.”

Donna’s heart sank. Harry said, “Don’t worry, Donna. Sherlock always says that at the beginning. He likes to lower your expectations before he transcends them.”

“Nevertheless,” hissed this Sherlock, with a malicious glance in Harry’s direction, “all hope is not lost.”

He beckoned them over to the dress. Donna stood as close to him as she thought she could. Harry sat on the end of the bed, looking as if she wished she had a bowl of popcorn.

“Traditional wedding dresses like this one are designed to skim the ground,” Sherlock said, “in order to complete the illusion that the bride’s body, below the waist, has dissolved into a diaphanous cloud of softness and purity. Here and here you can see bilateral stress patterns where you caught up the fabric in your hands and lifted the skirt so you could move forward without tripping over it. That and the hem, which is so thoroughly destroyed that no attempt was made to mend it, suggest that you were doing more running than the typical wedding ceremony usually involves.”

“Running?” Donna echoed, rubbing one of her aching temples.

“That is what I said,” Sherlock snapped. “In the dirt still embedded in the hem at the rear of the train are particles of the type of asphalt recently used to repave the M4. Despite the overpowering chemical smells introduced by the drycleaners, a whiff of automobile exhaust still lingers amongst the crinolines. Deduction—“

“Are you saying,” Donna burst out, “that I put on a wedding dress and went running down a _motorway_ in it?”

Sherlock looked at her as if she were a disgusting but rather interesting insect.

“I recommend that you pace yourself, Donna,” said Sherlock. “Don’t expend all your reserves of belligerent incredulity at once. There will be plenty of time later on for ear-splitting cries of disbelief.”

“Is he always this rude?” Donna demanded of Harry.

“Mostly,” she replied.

“You did go running in this dress,” Sherlock resumed. “And you did also wear it in the open air on a traffic-choked motorway. But you weren’t running _on_ the motorway. The particles of asphalt are present only at the very end of the train, which is what brushed the surface of the motorway when you made your flying leap.”

Donna barely stopped herself from letting out an ear-splitting cry of disbelief.

“Flying leap,” Harry said.

“From a moving car,” Sherlock went on. “Given the probable trajectory suggested by the wear pattern, you leapt from the car into a helicopter hovering a few feet above the road surface. Now from the state of the beading it’s obvious that before or after that you squeezed yourself through a number of tight spaces, but these and the netting are snagged and torn in so many places that we can’t deduce anything specific about what those places were. We can say, however, that this,” he said, stroking one of the irregular white streaks on the bodice, “is water damage. It’s everywhere. There is not a square inch of this gown that does _not_ show signs of immersion. It shows up on _both_ sides of the fabric, which must have been soaked right through. Lestrade might try to tell you that you’d taken a shower in this dress but that of course would be ludicrous.”

“It certainly would,” Donna retorted.

“Obviously what happened is that you jumped or fell into the Thames.”

Donna gasped. “I _what_?”

“The streaks left behind indicate the salt content of the water. Saltier than tap water, fresher than the ocean, and under the glass tiny particles of silt become visible. This clearly the residue of the untreated Thames. More intriguing to the practitioner of the science of deduction is this residue here,” he said, pointing to an irregularly shaped splotch by the waist. “The cleaning fluid removed most of the actual adhesive, but—“

“Sherlock, stop,” Harry said. “Just—tell me that’s not fucking—duct tape—“

“If you would allow me to finish, Harry, you would learn that the grease stains left in horizontal bands across the fabric of the bodice and skirt are in fact characteristic of a new and quite expensive brand of eco-friendly packaging tape made of recycled paper backed with a glue synthesized from the abandoned webs of the _Nephila komaci—“_

“From the…necrophiliac…what?” Donna said, but Sherlock talked right through her.

“—and that despite the drenching this dress received, there are also signs of exposure to intense heat…”

Sherlock trailed off. He stared into space for a moment. Then he exploded into activity. From another pocket of that coat he pulled out a little metal box with a long cord attached to something that looked a little like an old-fashioned microphone. He ran the microphone along the fabric of the bodice. It began clicking away.

“Sherlock,” Harry said. “Tell me you don’t carry a Geiger counter in your pocket.”

“Of course not, Harry,” the young man answered. “Geiger counters are thoroughly antiquated. This is one of Mummy’s inventions.”

Donna glanced back at Harry. For whatever reason, it was the first time she’d actually been startled by anything this lunatic said.

Sherlock frowned in concentration as he moved the counter around under the armpits, and the clicking became a frenzied patter.  

“You were correct, Harry,” Sherlock said. “I am no longer bored.”

“What is it?” Donna said, now frightened as well as angry. “Is that thing… _radioactive_?”

“Just barely,” said Sherlock, with a cheerful smile.

“Jesus Christ,” Harry shouted.

“Calm yourself,” Sherlock said, waving in her direction. “These particles are as yet unknown to human science, but they evidently have a short half-life and in this concentration they’re most likely not lethal. Apart from some memory loss and an obviously lowered intelligence, Donna doesn’t seem to have suffered from her prolonged exposure to whatever this is.”

“I’ll lower your intelligence right now, mate,” Donna shouted, clenching her fists.

“Others have tried and failed,” Sherlock replied. “The reading is strongest in the areas of the dress most directly exposed to your own perspiration. In other words, the dress is only radioactive because _you_ are. Or rather,” he said, as he pointed that hideous machine in her direction, “because you _were_. The you of today isn’t even moving the needle. The you of two years ago was literally sweating radiation.”

“So.” Donna bit off. “Horses sweat, athletes perspire, ladies glow, and _I_ emit unidentified subatomic particles. Is that what you’re saying?”

Sherlock and Harry were both looking at her in rather a strange way.

“Fascinating,” Sherlock murmured.

“All right Sherlock,” Harry said, while Donna closed her eyes and rubbed her aching head. “I can’t _wait_ to see what you do with _this_ fucking fact pattern.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment. Then, for no reason Donna could understand, leapt into the air, did a half-turn, and came down clapping his hands like a child at a Christmas pantomime.

“Yes!” he shouted. “Yes. Brilliant. This—“ He threw a hand out, arresting the gesture in mid-air as he contemplated some new possibility. He fixed Donna with an unsettling stare which made her headache even worse.

“Your imaginary friend told Harry that if you recovered those memories you would die,” Sherlock said. “Physiologically speaking, that’s nonsense. Memories are just chains of chemicals. They can’t harm your brain tissue. To say that recovering a repressed memory will destroy your brain is like saying that installing Windows 8 will blow up your hard drive.”

“It bloody will,” Donna retorted. “I’ve seen it happen.”

“My example was poorly chosen,” Sherlock said, dropping his hands. “I retract it. The point is, Donna, this dress didn't go to the altar. It went to war. Somehow, on the way to the church, you saw something you weren’t supposed to see,” Sherlock breathed, taking Donna by the shoulders and staring into her eyes. “You and the miserable creature to whom…”

“Sherlock,” Harry warned.

“I’m sorry, I’ll start again. You and the man you had chosen to bless with your lifelong companionship saw something very secret and very dangerous involving a type of radiation as yet unclassified by human science. And the people who were handling this radiation saw you. They killed the groom outright and disposed of the body somehow. You survived, possibly because the groom sacrificed his life to protect you, though frankly I find that the least convincing part of this theory.”

Donna let out a shriek of outrage.

“So help me, Sherlock—“ Harry began.

“The groom died,” he went on, as if they hadn’t spoken, “and the bride ran. You got into a cab—the synthetic fibers trapped in the torn edges of the crinolines are quite distinctive, Harry, don’t bother me when I’m explicating—from which you were abducted by helicopter. The helicopter obviously contained significant quantities of the radioactive material they were using to build a bomb.”

“Oh my God,” Harry exclaimed.

“You had stumbled, Donna, across a gang of highly organized eco-terrorists.”

“Eco…” Harry began. “Oh. Because of the tape.”

“Yes. The webs that go into that adhesive are sustainably harvested without harm to the spiders who made them, but the process is so expensive only the fanatically committed would consider purchasing anything made with it. The eco-terrorists used it to restrain you during the flight. They did not, however, anticipate your natural pugnacity. You fought your way loose and, as the helicopter flew over the Thames, you jumped out. You hit the water hard, but you managed to drag yourself to safety. The men who were holding you didn’t dare risk another helicopter capture. But they…sent a confederate after you! YES!”

Sherlock rubbed his hands and gave a little springing hop of joy.

“Yes! The mysterious figure formerly known as ‘Tim,’ who can’t possibly be an optical illusion because first, Harry saw and spoke to him, and second, the story your grandfather told you is manifestly a lie concocted to prevent you from attempting to make contact. ‘Tim’ is a member of this eco-gang who was sent after you to wipe you out but. The conscience of the eco-terrorist is always riven with contradiction. Blowing people to bits out of respect for all life on earth, on the internal conflict, oh the ambivalence. Face to face with his prey, the accomplice couldn’t bring himself to destroy even the least of God’s creatures.”

“The people you work with,” Donna inquired.  “Do they ever just punch you, very hard, in the face?”

“Occasionally,” Sherlock said loftily. “Instead of killing you, this ‘Tim’ administered something—could be anything from an injection to a clout on the head—which wiped out your memory of the past few hours. He brought you home and he told your family that if you or anyone else ever said a word about this you would all be killed.”

Donna shivered.

“Grand-dad,” Donna said. “He said he wished he could tell me but…oh my God. You must be right.”

“Of course I’m right,” said Sherlock, swinging his coat on and stuffing his tools into his pockets. “Thanks for the call, Harry. She’ll probably never get her memories back. But she may have just saved the whole of London.”

“But what about—“ Harry began.

“Not now, Harry!” Sherlock shouted. “There’s a gang of eco-terrorists out there with an entirely unknown weapon. They were stopped in their tracks on Donna’s wedding day but they’ve had two years since to plan. ‘Tim’s’ presence in the area indicates that the gang has returned and is active once more. They are no doubt more militant than ever. Who knows how long we have to stop them.”

Sherlock whipped a mobile out of his pocket and began pressing the screen.

“By the way, Donna,” Sherlock said. “Harry’s about to ask if you’ll stay for dinner. I should if I were you. You’re not safe on the street. Keep an eye on her, Harry. If she ever recovers those memories, she might just turn out to be the most important woman in the universe.”

Sherlock put the phone to his ear.

“John,” Sherlock shouted, rushing through the doorway. “Drop everything. This is the big one.”

Donna went to the door he’d left open, sending him off with an ironic wave. He never looked back.

“Well,” Harry said, as Donna pushed the front door closed. “He’s right about one thing. You should stay for dinner.”

Harry headed toward the kitchen. Donna trailed after her. Her headache had subsided while Sherlock was spinning out his theory, but she was even more bewildered than before.

“Is he…right…about…the rest of that?”

Harry turned on one of the burners. “Probably.” Harry pulled open the refrigerator. “He usually is. Are you a vegetarian?”

“No,” Donna scoffed.

“Thank God. How’s pork tenderloin? I’m sort of taking a break from poultry right now.”

Some kind of new diet, Donna thought, pulling a stool up to the counter.

Harry began slicing the tenderloin into rounds. “I like Sherlock’s theory, it’s coherent and explains the major facts and unfortunately for all of us it is probably true. It just doesn’t explain why you saved the dress. Wouldn’t your family just have…burned it, or something, to keep you from remembering?”

“You don’t know my grand-dad,” Donna said. “If there was a man out there who…who really loved me that much…” Donna took a moment to get control of her voice. “Gramps would have wanted me to know. Someday. When it was safe.”

Harry’s eyes darkened a little.

“Makes sense,” was all she said, before pulling a roll of plastic wrap out of one of the drawers.

“What _I_ can’t understand,” Donna said, “is why I don’t remember this man I was meant to marry _at all_. I mean, all right, ‘Tim’ somehow stopped me remembering my wedding day…but it’s like any memory I ever had of that poor man has been…wiped out. How could you even do that?”

“Could be you repressed them,” Harry said, tossing the box of plastic wrap from one hand to the other. “His death was so traumatic you just locked all your memories of your relationship away, because they were too painful.”

Harry turned suddenly back to the counter, away from Donna.

“It’s been known to happen.”

Harry laid some plastic wrap along the counter, turned the little round slices of pork on their sides, and drew a square metal mallet out of one drawer. She was obviously not interested, at the moment, in further conversation.

“Where’s your toilet?” Donna said.

“In there," Harry said, gesturing toward her bedroom

Donna went through the bedroom to the bathroom. When she came out, she nearly jumped. In the dim light, the bundle of white fabric on the back of the door looked almost like another person.

She’d coveted that dress for so long. And she didn’t even remember wearing it.

Maybe if she put it on, something would come to her.

Donna took it down, closed the door, and undressed. It was a bit snug going on. All those extra calories, right before bed.

She tugged the skirt down and looked at herself in the glass. The dress looked just about the way she felt. But nothing came to her, except a consciousness of just how pathetic she must look right now, and the return of that damned headache.

“Harry?” she called out. “Did you say you had aspirin?”

“Yes, I’ll show you where it is,” Harry called, as her steps came closer.

Harry opened the bedroom door. Donna turned sheepishly away from the mirror.

All the color drained out of Harry’s face. Her hand on the doorknob began to tremble.

“I know I’ve put on weight,” Donna said. “But is it _that_ bad?”

Harry put a hand up to her mouth. She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

“Harry?” Donna said, knocking tentatively on the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

“Please.” Harry’s voice was suddenly almost too weak to get through the bathroom door. “Please don’t take it personally, Donna. It’s nothing to do with you.”

Donna knew she should probably just wait for Harry to come out. But somehow, waiting by the bathroom door, not knowing what was going on, whether Harry was still retching or maybe dying or what, made her anxious. With her head still throbbing, Donna turned the handle and opened the door.

Harry was sitting on the floor, back against the tub, facing the toilet. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach. Her face was wet, and her eyes were red.

Donna crouched down near her. The remnants of the crinolines bunched up as the dress filled up the narrow bathroom.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Harry shouted, squeezing her eyes shut in protest. “I’m all right, Donna. I’ll be all right.”

Donna put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“You’re about as all right as I am,” Donna said, as gently as she could.

A sob burst out of Harry’s unwilling throat.

“It was such a beautiful dress,” Harry cried, twisting her head away from Donna’s gaze. “And he never saw her in it.”

The dam burst. Harry went on crying, without another word. Donna lowered her hips to the bathroom floor and sat there with her, one hand still on Harry’s shoulder, trying to help this kind but wounded stranger through a grief she couldn’t share, and wondering what it was about this situation that felt so familiar.

*          *          *

“So,” Donna said, laying down her knife and fork. “Do you…I mean…”

Donna had changed out of the dress, and Harry had gone back to the kitchen and made dinner, and neither had said very much. Over dinner, though, she’d perked up; and Donna thought maybe she could risk bringing up the elephant in the room.  

“Do _you_ think I’m better off not remembering?” Donna said. “Because it seems like it must all be…pretty bad. The things I’ve lost.”

Harry had already finished her pork, and was looking down at the empty plate.  

“If you don’t want to—“ Donna began.

“No,” Harry said. “It’s a good question.”

With a sigh, Harry looked up, and braced herself.

“What with the drinking, there’s a lot I don’t remember. Most of it probably wasn’t important. Ninety percent of it was probably fighting with Clara. But with every thing you don’t remember, you know yourself a little bit less.” Harry swallowed something and went on. “Because you did it all. You don’t remember saying that hideous thing; but the person you said it to does. The more memories you lose, the more the person you _think_ you are drifts away from the person you _really_ are.”

Donna felt her eyes beginning to sting.

“I don’t remember anything,” Harry said, “about the very worst night of my life.”

Harry’s voice broke on the end of the sentence. Donna looked up; but Harry’s face was stone now, and that was the only break there would be.

“Someone close to me died that night,” Harry said. “I was there. I don’t remember it. I know that memory has nothing for me but agony. But I wish I had it. It’s those moments of crisis that define you. And I would have been the last…the last thing…before…”

Harry took another deep breath.

“I was there for her last moments. I was the only one with her. And I don’t remember them. And that’s a crime. All by itself. To have lost the last of someone.”

Harry pushed her plate away in silence.

“Why does that have to be what defines you?” Donna said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why that more than anything else?” Donna replied. “Why couldn’t it be this? Making this…whatsit…which by the way was _fabulous_ , and eating dinner, and talking to me like I’m a grown-up which for some reason nobody does any more. Why do you have to know who you are as a superhero? What happens every day…isn’t that what really makes you who you are?”

A little vertical line of surprise appeared between Harry’s eyebrows.

“Look at you, Donna,” Harry said. “You’re a philosopher.”

“Aaaand now you want to take the piss.”

“No,” Harry said, urgently. “No, I’m not making fun of you. I mean it.”

Harry looked away, vexed with herself, and then picked up her plate and carried it into the kitchen.

“Do you mind a bit of music?” Harry said. “I thought maybe something cheerful.”

“Yeah,” Donna laughed. “We could both do with that.”

Harry plugged her iPod into the deck on the kitchen counter. Something folky and bouncy burst out of it. Donna took her own plate to the sink.

“I’ll take care of it,” Harry said, as Donna reached for the sponge. “You go sit.”

Donna drifted over to the living area. The walls were lined with bookcases, stuffed with actual books. Literature mostly, stuff Donna had been told to read in school and never did. On the table by the sofa, next to a laptop, there was a stack of heavy hardcovers--the kind with glossy color pictures of faraway places. She trailed a finger over the spines. _Churches of Venice. The Mysteries of the Aztecs. The Last Days of Pompeii._

Her headache was coming back. She pulled out the book about Pompeii. She stared down at the mosaic on the cover. It was a black dog, jaws open, snarling at her, surrounded by the words _Cave Canem_.

She wanted to open it. Something put her off. Maybe the dog.

Harry was right about one thing, Donna thought, looking down at the cover. It would be better to know. No matter how bad the memories were. It would be better to have them.

The music wasn’t cheerful any more. Some kind of stringed instrument, strange and haunting, and a lone female voice, echoing as if down a stone corridor.

_I am thinking about the woman_

_In the century of peace_

_On a bright mosaic_

_She is washing on her knees_

_And she looks up at the black sky_

_Beyond the mountain tall._

_She says, oh good, the rain is finally going to fall…_

Donna watched her hands open the book. It was as if they were doing it of their own accord. As if they belonged to someone else.

The images seemed too bright. As if they weren’t really pictures. As if she was looking not at photographs, but at the city itself. The walls and the mosaics and the murals and the flakes of ash drifting down as the children ran holding tight to the hands of their screaming mothers.

The book fell to the floor.

“Donna?” Harry called, over the sound of running water.

Donna rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, pressing down as if she could scrub out the images that way. The music kept on streaming.

 _everyone has memories from that night of melted stone_    _the neighbor’s nightgown_    _the screaming on the phone_  
  
They all insisted on running to the beach, the worst place, the lowest point, the lava would just flow over them. Donna had run till she was out of breath, screamed till she was hoarse, and nobody cared because who was she but a stranger, a madwoman from another time and place, just a traveller passing through…

 _and the tired man at the station says we can’t tell who’s alive_     _all we ever know is that the tourists survive_

…just a traveller passing through with a man in a brown suit and a blue box… 

 _let’s go, they say_      _let’s go Pompeii_

“Donna!”

Harry’s voice rose to a scream. Donna felt the floor against her back. She must have fallen. Images were flashing into her brain so fast she could barely make them out. Her head was on fire. Maybe literally. When she opened her eyes, she saw a yellow haze swirling between her eyes and everything else.

Through the veil of agitated fire she saw Harry’s face, bending over her.

“Donna—what—what’s…“

One of Harry’s hands floated through the bright yellow currents and touched Donna’s temple.

There was a flash of terrible pain.

When Donna opened her eyes, the pain was subsiding. The yellow mist was gone. No. It was climbing up Harry’s arm. It was disappearing into her head.

“Oh no,” Donna cried, scrambling to her feet. “No, Harry, it’ll kill you—“

The last scraps of yellow fire dissipated. Harry’s eyes were staring. Her mouth was open, but nothing came out of it. Donna lurched toward her, still unsteady on her own feet, and put one hand on each of Harry’s temples.

A snap, a tingle in her fingers’ ends, and a brief burst of golden light, haloing her hands for a moment before disappearing into them.

Donna dropped her hands, slowly. She was staring into Harry’s eyes. They looked wider than ever, and Donna felt as if she could see the whole universe in them.

“Donna,” Harry said, slowly, as if it was an effort to form words. “I know what happened to you.”

“So do I,” Donna said.

Tears rushed out along with the words and her voice nearly failed.

“I remember everything,” Donna gasped.

By God there was enough of it. Trying to put the images and thoughts and equations and stars and planets and pyrovars and vespiforms and Haath and Daleks and vashta nerada and Sontarans and that evil time cockroach thing and the TARDIS and _we had the best of times didn’t we_ and everything else into some kind of order, she lost track of the world around her. When Donna felt she could spare the energy to take a look at it, Harry had the kitchen window open, and had shoved her head and shoulders through the opening.

“Harry, no!” Donna shouted.

Harry struggled back in through the window. “Fucking light pollution!” she shouted, with a new and rather manic light in her eyes. “In this sodding town you can barely see Orion on a clear night. Stars. I need stars!”

Donna watched Harry rush over to her laptop, which sat on the table in the living area. She opened it up and pressed the power button.

“Christ you’re slow,” Harry ranted, shaking both hands at the computer as it sang its little Windows song. “Give me a microwave oven, a pair of tweezers, and a blowtorch and I could make a microprocessor twice as fast as you in the time it’s taking you to boot up. Oh my God. Not only did I just say that, it is actually true. It is. Isn’t it?”

Harry looked up at Donna.

“What I just said? That is literally true?” Harry repeated.

“Oh yes,” Donna said, smiling for the first time in months.

“Aaaaaah I can’t stand it!” Harry bounded away from the computer and sprinted into her bedroom. Donna found her sitting on top of the bed, crawling around on top of the quilt. She noticed for the first time that it was a picture of the solar system.

“Totally wrong,” Harry muttered to herself. “If this quilt was really done to scale then with a Mercury that size the sun wouldn’t even fit in the room. And the orbits are complete bollocks. And Pluto, poor Pluto, demoted just because of that Persephonian virus pandemic. Not such a tragedy. A little pomegranate juice intravenously and you’re fine. Anyway it wasn’t the bloody planet’s fault, was it?”

“No,” Donna said. “No, I’ve—I mean—the Doctor—always thought that was very unfair.”

Harry’s head snapped up suddenly. “Listen.”

Donna could hear it too now. A strange sound coming, apparently, from the street below. A low, wheezing, gasping sound, like a broken-down car trying to start on a cold winter morning.

Donna and Harry stared at each other. Then they both rushed to the bedroom window.

They nearly cracked heads when they got there. Harry stepped back, bowing and sweeping an arm toward the sill. “Please. After you.”

Donna threw up the sash. Her headache had disappeared. Her head was, in fact, perfectly clear, if a little  busy. So much better than the first time. If only she had thought of this then. True enough there was a lot going on, but…

Donna clambered out onto the fire escape. Bending over the railing, she could see the light flashing on top of a blue police call box that had sprouted on the opposite side of the street. And just before it disappeared under the wire platform she was standing on, she caught a glimpse of the tails of a long brown coat, and a flash of white on his feet. The familiar hum of the sonic screwdriver sounded below. She didn’t need to see the blue flash to know that he had opened the side entrance to Harry’s building.

With some difficulty—a Time Lord consciousness didn’t make one’s body any more graceful—Donna crawled back into the room. Harry was standing on the opposite side of the bed.

“It’s him,” Donna said.

Harry was closer, so she just barely made the door before Donna got there. The Doctor had his back to the bedroom; he was busy sonicking the front door lock he’d just broken so it would stay shut. He was already half-running when he swung around, but the sight of Harry standing there, and Donna right behind her, arms folded, stopped him short. He almost fell over; but he backed up fast enough to recover. He stood there, slightly winded, glancing from one to the other.

“Hello, Doctor,” said Harry. “Thanks for knocking.”

The Doctor looked at Donna. Donna tossed her head, brushed her hair back from her shoulders, and braced herself for impact.

For one moment—for less than a moment—his eyes lit up, and he drew in a breath that sounded like it might become a laugh. But before he could exhale, the clouds had gathered. So much anger, so much pain, and with it something Donna had always felt but never been quite able to place until that last day in the TARDIS. Panic.

“You had to do it,” the Doctor said, nearly gritting his teeth as he flung the words at Harry. “You wouldn’t rest until she remembered. And now you’ve killed her.”

That little shiver went through him—the wave that meant he was clenching up, readying himself for the next hideous loss. The next grief that he would swallow and tamp down and never let himself feel again. And it nearly broke her heart. But it didn’t break her anger.

“Oh no,” Donna said, brushing the bangs back from her forehead. “Oh I don’t think so. I think old Donna’s going to be knocking around the universe for a good long while, spaceman.”

Donna advanced into the living room, brushing past him and dropping into an armchair. She crossed one leg over the other, slowly, looking up at him with a smile, daring him to respond.

The Doctor seemed to be frozen where he stood. Natural enough. How often, really, did something happen that he didn’t understand? That he _knew_ he didn’t understand.

The Doctor’s eyes shifted back to Harry.

“How…” he began.

“Ah yes,” Donna said. “You’re wondering why I’m still alive. It’s that little bit of human you’re always forgetting, Doctor. You see, when the association load reached critical and it broke the mnemnobarrier,” Donna went on, breezily, “all that stuff you compacted into the suppressed microneurites fissipated into an external cloud of psychopyronic vapor. And then Harry, when she saw something was wrong she touched me, because that’s the human instinct, and…”

Donna glanced lightly over to Harry. Harry took a deep breath and shoved her hands into her trouser pockets.

“So then the consciousness cloud latched onto me,” Harry said, rapidly, “and it was just infiltrating _my_ brain when Donna came over and put her hands on my head. So together we shattified the psychinesia which released about twenty percent of the spatiotemproprioception as heat energy and each of us absorbed an equal part of the remainder into those of her existing underutilized neurons which were hardy enough to withstand augmentation. Took about three seconds,” she said, with an impish grin and a little self-satisfied click of the teeth, “and the biaggregation could have been a tetch better optimized but be fair, it’s never been done before. Am I going to talk like this for the rest of my life? Because I’m already annoying myself.”

The Doctor straightened up. He was still giving out that shocked stare that made him look like Macbeth about to grab for the dagger.

“No,” he finally said, scratching the back of his head with one hand. “Judging by the last time, the personality interpenetration appears to be a temporary effect.”

“Good,” Harry snapped. “Because you're not personally interpenetrating _me_ , mate.”

The Doctor’s eyes got even wider. Harry shot a frightened look at Donna.

“Oh fuck, that was you, wasn’t it?” Harry cried. “Damn it! I had a voice. It was a _good_ voice. I liked it.”

“It’ll come back, Harry,” Donna said.

“Yes,” Harry replied, “yes, I’m sure it will. Soon, I hope. Jesus. I don’t know how Sherlock stands himself. Well. Never mind me. Carry on. I’ll just—be—over here—doing a thing.”

Harry zoomed into the kitchen, where she stopped in front of the microwave oven with a rather dangerous look in her eye. Donna looked back up at the Doctor from the really quite comfy armchair she had chosen. The Doctor was still too tense unclench his jaw, never mind sit down.

“But you can’t live with a Time Lord consciousness in your head,” he insisted. “It was killing you. Your brain was breaking down. I saw it happening.”

“I don’t have a Time Lord consciousness in my head,” Donna returned, in a polite falsetto he was right to mistrust. “I have _part_ of a Time Lord consciousness in my head. We shared it,” she said, pointing from the now-distant Harry back to herself. “One part in her head, one part in mine, and twenty percent fractalized during partition, as Harry just told you. Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. You weren’t listening, because you were too busy knowing everything.”

“That’s not fair!” he shouted, throwing a hand out at her.

“When has it ever been?” Donna fired back.

He was so angry and so miserable at the same time. Looking at his eyes took her right back to that basement under H. C. Clemens. Water gushing in a hundred directions, killing off the last generation of an entire species. Something he had sworn he would never do, and yet seemed compelled to keep doing. The poor man, hunting himself from one end of the universe to the other, believing somehow that he could undo the first mistake by repeating it.

He must have seen her softening. One corner of his mouth had twitched up into something that might be a smile.

“So…you’re all right?” he said, as if he were finally allowing himself to believe it. “You…you feel all right? Your brain isn’t going all…sort of…clacketyclacketyclackety…”

“Only about forty percent of it,” Donna said. “And that much of you I can handle.”

Donna smiled at him, and let the silence get longer.

“So—but this is fantastic!” he said. He paused a moment over the word, as if it had surprised him. But his eyes were starting to get their old light back. “You’re back! You’re properly….” He swallowed whatever he’d planned to say next, and snuffled up something that might have been about to be a tear. “I never thought I’d see you again. I mean not…not as _my_ Donna.”

His chin quivered. His arms drifted toward her. Donna couldn’t help it. She jumped out of the chair, crossed the room, and threw her arms around him. Shoulderblades and ribcage and skinny neck and all.

He held her so tightly it made her breath shallow. Just as well. This way at least she wouldn’t start sobbing. And since he couldn’t see her face, she could let the tears come. He lifted her up off the floor and spun her round, shouting her name. Donna tightened her grip on shoulders and let out a little shriek.

When her feet came back to the floor, Donna could see Harry over the Doctor’s shoulder. Harry had the microwave out on the countertop and was disemboweling it. With a pair of tweezers in one hand and the meat tenderizer in the other, she was muttering quietly to herself as she turned over the bits and pieces.

“Does your lease allow you to do that?” Donna called.

The Doctor let go of Donna. He laughed too, when he saw Harry’s face.

“Can’t talk,” Harry said, as sparks flew from the two wires she’d connected. “Engineering.”

Donna and the Doctor looked at each other. He was smiling, though the tears on his face were still drying. Donna wiped away her own, and took a deep and unfortunately somewhat snorty breath.

“I’m parked just outside,” the Doctor said, nodding his head in the direction of Harry’s bedroom. “Do you want to see the Fellspoons? They’re mountains that move. But of course you know that. Or the lost moon of Poosh. I’ve been, you know, since….we all…put it back. It’s quite lovely, really. You and me and the moon, Donna. Just like old times.”

He was already moving. He kept right on talking till he reached Harry’s front door. He touched the knob, realized she wasn’t talking, and turned around to see her standing exactly where he had left her.

“Donna?” he said, after a moment of wary silence.

“If you think,” Donna said, as the anger surged from the pit of her stomach right up to her brain, “that I’m going to just hop back into the TARDIS with you after what you did to me—“

That smile of his had never disappeared more quickly.

“What I _did_ to you?” he shouted, striding back toward her. “I saved your life!”

“What _life_?” Donna shot back.

He stopped short, staring at her.

“Everyone at home walking on eggshells, afraid to talk to me about anything except the weather and what’s on the telly. Mum lying to me every day—well, all right, she’s always lied to me but grand-dad.”

She was vexed to find herself crying. But at least he was starting to look truly uncomfortable.

“To think of that poor man making up ridiculous stories about invisible mermaids just to keep me from remembering _you_ ,” Donna cried. “The one person, my whole life, I could always trust—lying to me, for _you_. I lost all my old friends cause I thought they were taking the mickey and I called them all liars once too often. I _forgot_ about poor Lance, because the whole six months with him was tied to _you_. Forgot about Lee, because he was part of _you_. Lost all the men I ever cared about and I can’t start up with anyone new,” she roared, “because ten minutes in it’s all so where were you when the earth got stolen and I'm all, gosh, I must have been in the loo!”

“I’m sure it was hard, Donna,” the Doctor said, in his most patronizing tones. “I know it hurt. It hurt me too—“

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Donna thundered. “Don’t stand there and tell me _you_ were the one who _really_ suffered. I haven’t worked a day since. Donna Noble, savior of the universe, too thick to make it through a job interview because _you_ shut down so much of my brain I barely had enough left to blow my nose with!”

“It _had_ to be done!” he shouted, in a voice that made Harry flinch. “I didn’t _like_ it any better than I liked drowning the Raknos or burning Pompeii but that’s what it’s like when you’re the last of the Time Lords, there’s no one else to do what _has to be done_.”

Donna held up a hand to stop him. She pointed to her own face.

“Hello,” she said. “Still human. Still Time Lord. Still _not actually dead!_ ”

The Doctor bent his head, looked down at his tennis shoes, and sighed.

“Well I didn’t _know_ there was another way,” he finally said, looking defiantly up at her.

He sounded so tired. And he must be. It must be exhausting, living this way for nine hundred years. It was so hard not to give in, to tell him it was all right, to make him feel better. But it had to be done.

“Of course you didn’t,” Donna said.

She felt calmer now, almost tender toward him. She moved toward him, reaching out to put a hand on the lapel of his coat, right over one of his hearts.

“You didn’t know,” Donna said. “You couldn’t. Because you’re not human. You did for me exactly what you would do for yourself. When something happens to _you_ that’s too terrible to live with, you swallow it down and squash it into a box and seal it off for good. That’s apparently how Time Lords cope. Something threatens your sanity, you repress it.”

He nodded. At last, he was thinking, she gets it.

Donna lifted her hand.

“I’m—mostly—human,” Donna said. “I didn’t need to _repress_ your consciousness. Turns out that what _I_ needed to do was _share_ it.”

“But I didn’t know that then,” the Doctor insisted. “You didn’t either. As far as we knew there was _no alternative."_

“Yes there was,” Donna said quietly.

 “So what?” the Doctor demanded, advancing furiously on her. “I should have just _let you die?_ ”

“You should have _given me a choice!_ ”

He drew back, blinking rapidly, perhaps to camouflage the tears that seemed about to fall.

“You gave the Sycorax a choice,” Donna said, bitterly. “You were ready to _die_ just to give the Sontarans a choice. You gave the bloody _daleks_ choices. But not me.”

The memories couldn’t come back fast or hard enough now. _I want to stay_    _I can’t go back_    _Don’t make me go back._

“I begged you,” Donna said, crying with grief but also with shame. “I begged you not to do it. You did it anyway.”

“I couldn’t let you die!”

“Even if it was my choice?” Donna cried.

“It couldn’t have been!” the Doctor shouted, flinging himself away from her. His coat swung behind him as he paced a circuit of Harry’s living area. “Why would anyone _choose_ death?”

Donna couldn’t get the words out. She was crying too hard. She couldn’t explain it to him. She couldn’t, at that moment, explain it to herself.

“Because time is not a line!”

That wasn’t Donna. That came from Harry, who was leaning over the counter and its litter of circuits and wires, hands braced on the edge of the counter, almost visibly seething.

“I know that, Harry,” the Doctor snapped. “I’ve been a Time Lord a lot longer than you have.”

“Yes. You’ve known it so long you’ve forgotten what it means.”

Harry tried vaulting over the counter, didn’t clear it, and had to let herself down on the other side rather awkwardly. She leaned her hips against the counter, her hands wrestling the air around her as she tried to explain.

“Time is not a line,” Harry repeated, drawing a globe in the air. “That means death is not the end. Somewhere in time, we’re all dead. Somewhere in time, we’re all alive.”

Donna had never seen the Doctor stand still for this long. He was fascinated; but he was also so tense he looked like she could snap him in half just by touching him.

“What matters isn’t when we go,” Harry said. “What matters is what we give the universe while we’re in it. Because the universe is always changing, time is in flux, right,” Harry said, beginning to pick up speed. “The universe doesn’t end. It’s always there. As long as it changes it goes on living. We add what we can to it. You make yourself a bit of color and light, as bright and as beautiful as you can be. All across time we go on adding what we can, so the universe gets richer, so there’s more change and more new and more possibility. Donna did that. She did it so beautifully. She took a life nobody would have looked twice at and she made it amazing. She didn’t just keep the universe safe. She gave it something new. And _you_ said, I don’t like this new thing, it’s scary and it hurts, and you shoved it into the box and sent it back.”

“She couldn’t have gone on that way,” the Doctor repeated. “She would have died.”

“She _will_ die!” Harry shouted back. “Humans die. You can’t save us from that. It’s not your job.”

“Oh,” the Doctor snapped. “Now you’re going to tell me what my job is.”

“I don’t _have_ to tell you,” Harry burst out. “The aliens you fight, the ones you keep running into. The Daleks, the cybermen, the Sontarans. What do they have in common? What do they _all_ _do_?”

“They kill people,” the Doctor said, almost on the point of tears.

“No,” Donna shouted, as her brain came back to life. “They kill when they have to. But what they all want is to make the whole universe exactly like them.”

“Thank you, Time Lady,” Harry said, gesturing toward her. “They want to make the universe perfectly solid and perfectly safe and perfectly dead. And you stop them.”

The Doctor turned his back to them. Harry reached after him as if hoping he would feel her touching his back, even from where she was standing.

“Your job isn’t to prolong our lives,” Harry said. “Your job is to protect change. To make room for new things. To keep time in flux. Your job, Doctor,” Harry said, waving half of the microwave’s front door at him, “is to keep the universe weird.”

He spun around and fixed Harry with a blistering glare. “Would you _shut up!_ ” he shouted, hoarse. “You haven’t the _faintest_ idea what you’re talking about!”

Harry didn’t answer right away. She just looked at him, and Donna thought she’d never seen eyes that sad.

“I know,” Harry finally said. “I’m just another obnoxious woman giving you a hard time. But someday, Doctor, you’ll be sitting all by yourself in the TARDIS, and you’ll think about what I just said,” Harry went on, softly, “and it will make perfect sense to you. And until that happens, there’s really no point in our talking.”

She swept her mess up off the counter and stalked off to her bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Donna called.

“To my room,” she called back. “And then I thought maybe I'd go back to 1983 and watch my parents fight.”

The door slammed. Donna and the Doctor were left there, stranded awkwardly at opposite ends of the rug, looking at each other.

“So is this it, then?” he demanded, in a breaking voice. “We’re not…” He took a difficult breath. “We’re not…friends…any more?”

Donna opened her mouth to reply. The Doctor threw himself into the armchair, shielding his face with one hand, as if whatever she had to say might blind him.

She couldn’t stand it any more. She crouched down by the chair, putting one hand over his.

He looked up. His eyes were wet and his jaw was trembling.

“Oh Doctor,” Donna said. “I’ll always be your friend. Always. If you needed someone to die for you, right now, I’d do it.”

He compressed his lips, and nodded.

“Course what I’d rather do would be kick whatever was threatening you so hard it’d fly backside first out the other end of the time vortex. But you know what I mean.”

He laughed, still crying. She looked into those eyes, so hurt and so baffled, and she almost relented. But those eyes told her why she couldn’t. He still thought he had done the right thing.

“If you ever need my help,” Donna said, “you call me. I’ll be there. You gave me so much, you did so much for me, you—you’ll always be—the most wonderful man—“

She took both of his hands. He was shaking his head, as if he couldn’t ever understand.

“I am your friend,” she said. “But until you understand what you did that day…I can’t travel with you.”

Because she was calm, because her voice was soft, because he could see, now, how much she still loved him, the Doctor’s tears were coming faster than ever.

“But I need you,” he said.

“You need someone,” Donna answered. “It doesn’t have to be me.”

Donna lifted her hands to brush away some more of her own tears.

“And there’s nothing I can say,” the Doctor said. “Nothing that would make you change your mind.”

The tears seemed to have drained the anger out of him. He looked just like Donna felt. Exhausted, and sad, and wishing there could be another way.

“There might be,” Donna said. “But if you don’t know what it is, then I can’t tell you.”

The Doctor nodded. He stood up. Donna had some trouble getting up from the crouch. He took her hand and helped her up. Touching his hand felt natural. It felt right. It felt like something she would miss, terribly, for the rest of her life.

“Right then, spaceman,” Donna said, after they’d looked at each other through their tears for long enough. “On yer bike.”

He started for the door.

She knew he’d turn around in the doorway. And he did.

“Goodbye, Donna,” he said, trying for the old smile. “You’ll be fine without me. You’ll be amazing.”

“I already am,” Donna said, doing her best to smile back.  

He nodded. Then he turned away.

The door closed behind him with a slam that Donna thought would break her into pieces. But it didn’t. She was still standing, looking at the door he’d gone out through, when Harry came out of the bedroom.

“Doctor Noble,” Harry said.

Donna turned. Her hands were streaked with black—singed, really—and in one hand she carried a plain, old-fashioned, incandescent light bulb.

“I’m considering pursuing a PhD in arse-kicking,” Harry went on. “Would you be my thesis advisor?”

Donna smiled.

“That broke your heart, didn’t it?” Harry said, in the exact same tone of voice.

Donna let out a long breath. “Yes.”

Harry nodded. “That’s how you know you did the right thing.”

Harry headed toward the refrigerator. She put the lightbulb down near the empty hole where the microwave had been.

“Harry,” Donna said, as she moved closer to take another look. “Where did you get that?”

Harry opened the fridge and stared into it. “There’s some pork left…but maybe this calls for sweet over savory.”

“Did you nick that lightbulb from the top of the TARDIS?” Donna said.

“Maybe,” Harry said, opening the freezer and taking out a quart container of ice cream.

Donna gasped.

“You vandalized the TARDIS,” she said. “How _could_ you?”

“I didn’t _vandalize it_ ,” Harry said, brandishing an ice cream scoop at her. “I upgraded it. With the TARDIS’s full consent and cooperation.” Harry set the scoop down on the counter. “The TARDIS you can reason with.”

Harry handed the light bulb to Donna. She cradled it gently in her hand. A bit of the TARDIS. Something hard that she could hold on to, no matter how far away he went. Something to help her remember.

“The Doctor probably won’t notice the difference,” Harry said, reaching up and opened a cupboard to take out two ceramic bowls. “Not until the miracle of miracles occurs. In the meantime, Donna, I cannot of course offer you a drink, but this is very good ice cream, and I have accumulated an _extensive_ collection of breakup music.”

They faced each other in the kitchen. But he’ll never be gone, now, Donna thought, looking at Harry’s forever-altered eyes. There’s always be a part of him here. A little bit of Gallifrey, in both of us.

Just as Donna was about to start crying, Harry burst out laughing.

“What is it?” Donna said.

Harry couldn’t answer. She waved a hand at Donna, laughing too hard to speak, as she subsided to the floor. With her back braced against the cabinets, she finally paused to draw breath.

“I just remembered,” Harry wheezed. “Sherlock…he’s out there…looking for a highly organized gang of eco-terrorists…”

“Oh my God,” Donna said, putting a hand up to her mouth. “Oh my God. What…what’s he going to find?”

“I don’t know!” Harry said, throwing up her hands. “I hope it's weird!”

For the first time in forever, Donna’s laugh broke out. Loud, piercing obnoxious as it had always been. It rang on the kitchen tiles like the bray of an air horn. Harry didn’t care. Donna didn’t care. All it did was make them laugh harder.

For a few minutes they just sprawled on the kitchen floor, unable to speak. Finally, Harry sat up, and sighed, and tried to take herself in hand.

“Oh you can’t blame the poor bastard,” she said. “How could he have known? I mean with you lot, once you’ve eliminated the impossible…what the fuck is left?”

“Absolutely nothing!”

And they were off again. Two impossible women, laughing without caring who heard them or what was coming next. Laughing just because they were still alive. Because they could do anything now. Anything they wanted with the rest of their lives, however short they might be.

*          *          *          *

The Doctor lay on the floor of the TARDIS and closed his eyes.

In his mind, the blue light flickered again against the window panes. It died away, leaving the windows of Adelaide Brooke’s house black and opaque. A tinted visor, with nothing on the other side of the glass but a corpse.

Outside the TARDIS, the snow was still falling. The Ood and its song had melted away, back to the Oodsphere. Fantastic creatures, the Ood. Keeping the universe weird since who knows when.

The Doctor curled up around the console. He slept like this sometimes, hugging the TARDIS, while she hugged him back as best she could. He hadn’t felt this low since the last day of Gallifrey.

He’d tried to die in the Medusa Cascade. The TARDIS wouldn’t let him. She’d held him together through the regeneration. It had been her idea to take him to Earth. She opened her doors onto a sunny London street on an ordinary day; and he walked through them just to humor her. She was the last thing in the universe that loved him, he thought, and he owed her that much. She’d have known, of course, that he couldn’t be in London two minutes before he found something wrong. It was habit, really, that made him cobble together that bomb and trace the plastic creatures to the basement of that department store. And then he’d seen a young human down there among the creatures, backing up to the wall, shouting at the aliens who were about to destroy her with that perfect combination of fear and courage that he’d always found so irresistible.

And he’d touched Rose’s hand, for the first time. And suddenly he wasn’t dead any more.

It was something humans did so easily. Touch. Everyone on Gallifrey always wondering what he saw in these apes…and he could never explain it to anyone. Ninety-eight percent of Time Lords didn’t seem to need touch. But there was something about the way these poor humans just extended their paws and opened their mouths for touch—as if their skins were not thin, as if there were not a hundred thousand creatures on a hundred thousand worlds that could have a human shredded and served in salad in under thirty seconds. It was idiotic, the way they touched. It was brave. It was noble, even.

That ignorant courage had passed from Rose’s sweaty palm right though his own thick skin and into his core. _I’m the Doctor_ , he’d told her afterward. And he’d never told Rose that until that moment, he’d been certain that he would never say those words again. Maybe that was one of the things the other Doctor could tell her.

But they always wanted more touch than he could stand. That was the trouble. He could never have explained that to Rose. You brought me to life, Rose. No one could never be more important than that. The rest is just…

Martha at least saw things clearly. She knew the odds and she got out while she was still mostly whole. Good for Martha. He was glad she wasn’t here to see him now. She’d lost a year of her life saving him, teaching everyone that he was some kind of savior…and now here he was, crying on the floor of the TARDIS as he thought about the woman whose life he’d just ended.

Donna got it. A touch of the hand where the pain was greatest; a hug to hold him together when he was just about to fall to pieces. He did the same for her. It was all either of them had wanted from each other. It was perfect. It could have lasted forever. Well. Till Donna died. As they all did.

Too bad Donna had never met Adelaide. That would have been fun. Adelaide having none of Donna’s attitude and Donna having none of Adelaide’s bossing. The two of them shouting at each other in the TARDIS. They would have made every inch of it ring.

_The Time Lord victorious is wrong._

Humans. It always had to be their idea. If you forced something on them they’d throw it away, whether it was a brick of solid gold or life itself. Adelaide Brooke had killed herself just to prove to him that the laws of time were not in fact his. That her life, her death, would always be her own.

Because once he’d forced life on her, she could never choose it. She couldn’t live that way. So she chose the only thing she could choose. Even though it was death.

_You should have given me a choice._

A human could never love something that it couldn’t choose. Even if it was a good thing. Even if it was life.

He opened his eyes.

That’s what I did to Donna. I took away her choice. I didn’t want her to have it because I wanted her to live. I couldn’t bear for her to die and for it to be all my fault.

 _I want to stay_ , she said. She knew what was happening. She told me what she wanted. Doctordonna in the TARDIS, for the rest of her life. No matter how short that was.

Ever since Gallifrey, I can’t not save people. As if I’ve been thinking all this time that if I just run hard enough, I might one day have saved more lives than I took on that day. But sometimes there’s no difference between saving a life and taking one. You have to leave them with something to choose. If they can’t choose life they can’t love it and without love they can add nothing. The color and light just goes out. The spark dies. And somewhere on the face of that shimmering globe, a stain of darkness spreads.

The Doctor sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees. The TARDIS hummed softly around him, waiting for instructions.

“I was wrong.”

He said it out loud. He wasn’t sure why. Donna wasn’t there to hear. Nobody was. Just the TARDIS.

The TARDIS. Who began vibrating, then humming, then shuddering.

With a screech of the brakes, the TARDIS took off. She rattled around in the time currents like a Xyphillian bat flying into a sandstorm. By the time he’d fought his way to the controls, he had bruises in quite a few new and interesting places. After Rose nearly lost a tooth on the railing, he’d made a start on installing padding. With one thing and another, he’d never got round to finishing it up.

He reached the master console at last.

Nothing worked. Nothing he pulled, nothing he pushed, nothing he twisted or slammed or whacked with a mallet, had any effect. Just as he was trying to remember something Donna had said, back at Bad Wolf bay, about shatterizing the exterior manifold, a sudden crash onto a hard surface sent him flying.

Scraping himself off the now-stationary floor, the Doctor dusted himself off, opened the doors, and peered cautiously out.

It was still snowing. But it was daytime, and the TARDIS had tucked itself into an alleyway that branched off a major London street. Which one he couldn’t be sure. He stepped out to check for signs—and there she was.

Donna Noble. A floating mane of hair you could spot half a mile away even in a snowstorm. Another huge coat with a ridiculous furry hood. Bags and bags of shopping dangling from each arm, and she still managed to have her phone at her ear.

His hearts went all wonky. He stood still, waiting for them to settle, and watched her silhouette get bigger.

“…not that I don’t _like_ Mum’s cooking,” Donna was yelling into the phone. “I’m just doing something different for Christmas dinner this year. With friends. I have friends now. Why can’t you come with me? You were invited. I know Mum and Harry don’t get along, but…”

Donna finally looked up. She stopped dead. She made that little _oh!_ of surprise, just as she had that day the TARDIS first pulled her in, dress and veil and tiara and all.

“I’ll call you back, Gramps,” Donna said.

Donna’s hand dropped, slowly. She slipped the phone back into her pocket. She didn’t put down the bags. She was studying at his face, trying to understand what had changed.

“I’m sorry, Donna,” he burst out. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Her head drew back in alarm.

“No!” he shouted, reaching toward her. “No, I don’t mean you’re about to die horribly.”

“Well, thank God for that!” Donna blurted, dropping her bags in relief.

“I mean I’m properly sorry,” he said, taking a step toward her. "For what I did.  I’m sorry I didn’t let you choose. It was your destiny. It was wrong to take it from you.”

Her nose wrinkled up and her mouth began to do that wobbly thing that meant she was just about to cry.

“I’m sorry, Donna,” he repeated. “I’d never…I wouldn’t ever do that to you again. Your life is yours. Your death is yours. I get that. I…”

His hands rose and fell, defeated. “I don’t know what else to say, except…”

The Doctor swallowed hard, straightened his tie, and steeled himself.

“Come with me?” he said.

The Doctor found himself quite suddenly under attack by a huge bundle of quilted fabric. Donna’s coat was hugging him much too tightly. Donna herself must be inside it somewhere.

Donna released him. He gasped for air while she clapped her gloved hands, doing a little dance on the pavement.

“Oh yes!” she said. “Yes! Yes yes yes. YES!”

Before he knew it they were running hand in hand down the alley toward the TARDIS. Donna’s shopping was still back on the sidewalk. She didn’t seem to care about it now.

The Doctor stopped short, reaching in his pockets for the spare key. He looked up at the TARDIS, wondering what had come over it all of a sudden. There was something…

There it was. The lantern on the top. The light was out of phase. It wasn’t ordinary visible light at all.

“Just a minute, Donna,” the Doctor said. “Have to do a bit of pre-flight maintenance.”

He ducked into the TARDIS, extracted a ladder, and leaned it against the side of the box. He climbed up to the roof. Donna waved up at him as he perched on a corner and took out his sonic screwdriver. The top of the lantern lifted off easily. He reached inside and unscrewed the light bulb.

It lay there warm in his hand. The neck was the right size, but the bulb itself was the wrong shape. It was lit up from inside, even though it was no longer connected to a power source. And some words had been crudely painted on the inside of the frosted glass. Shielding it with his hand, he could finally make them out. They read, _The miracle of miracles._

“Donna?” he called, leaning over the edge and dangling the light bulb from one hand. “Would you know anything about this?”

Donna reached into one of those coat pockets and pulled out another lightbulb. She waved it at him, tauntingly.

“Come and get it, spaceman!”

The Doctor slid down the ladder. He thrust the glass container, which was obviously not an actual lightbulb, at Donna.

“What is this thing?” he demanded.

“Single-use transport device,” Donna said. “Keyed to your brain waves, which of course are my brain waves too now, and Harry’s.”

“This is what she was building,” the Doctor said. “While we were having our little talk.”

“Yeah,” Donna said, with that little shrug. “She climbed out the fire escape and installed it while you were still arguing. So that way, as soon as you got the clue, bing! On goes the light bulb, and the transporter takes the TARDIS to wherever I am at that moment in time. Course Harry couldn’t have done it without her full cooperation. The TARDIS looks out for you, doesn’t she?” Donna grinned at him and pushed her head forward, playfully. “Cleverer than you are, sometimes. You can toss it now, it’s junk. It’s done what it was built to do.”

The Doctor hefted Harry’s engineering project and threw it against the side of the nearest building. It shattered into pieces. He scooped out the most intriguing bits of circuitry and pocketed them. Then he stalked back to the TARDIS, swiping the stolen bulb out of Donna’s hand as he passed, and climbed back up the ladder.

When he slid back down, Donna had the phone out and her thumbs were traveling over it.

“What are you doing?” said the Doctor.

“Texting Harry,” Donna said. “Miracle…of…miracles…has…occurred…sorry…about…the lack of…notice.” She shrugged. "She won't mind. She'll be expecting it. She can always find a new legal secretary for Harriet Watson and Associates. Course she won't be a genius like me; but then Harry's a genius too now, so she'll be fine."

Donna pushed the button, pocketed the phone, and gave him that little grin. Looking down sheepishly, he noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing track shoes. In the snow.

“Well, Donna said, when he looked up at her. “I thought, if you did turn up…that there might be some running involved.”

“You never gave up on me,” the Doctor said.

“Not quite,” Donna shrugged. “I thought you’d get there one day. But time is in flux. And it was a very terrible war.”

The Doctor took in a sharp breath.

“And of course,” Donna said, with that little tilt of the head, “you _are_ a bit thick sometimes, spaceman.”

“Lucky I’ve got you then,” he said, with a smile.

“Yes you are,” Donna said, with that wide, happy smile he’d thought he would never see again.

The Doctor snapped his fingers. The TARDIS opened her doors. Donna walked through first. He lingered in the doorway, watching her swagger about like she owned the place. It made him strangely happy. Donna had earned a bit of swagger. She’d saved the universe. She had, maybe, saved him. And she was back where she belonged. Doctor Donna, in the TARDIS. For as long as she wanted to be there.


	2. Epilogue

Christmas dinner at Harry's was a challenge. But, John thought, any place else was impossible. There was never any question of 221B. Lestrade had not been persuaded to abandon the bachelor pad for which "Spartan" would be too kind a term, and Molly was too nervous to enjoy entertaining at her place, even if someone else did the cooking. And it was nice for Mrs. Hudson to get out of Baker Street for a change. It was just the open plan thing was a little hard on Harry. She liked peace and quiet in the kitchen; and now instead she had a clear view of Sherlock locking horns with Lestrade while Molly tried to make peace, and Mrs. Hudson gazing with gentle sadness into her empty wine glass, wondering when someone would get round to filling it. John took it from her as he passed, went to the fridge, and groped for the bottle of zinfandel that Harry had shoved into the very back of the fridge. She could have it in the house now, temporarily; but she still preferred not to handle it.

John pulled the cork and put the glass on the counter. Harry was squatting by the oven door, frantically basting the turkey. He refreshed Mrs. Hudson's drink with a generous hand, then replaced the bottle in the fridge.

Harry's phone began wheezing. She'd fixed the text alert, sort of; John didn't think this dying accordion effect was an improvement, but Harry seemed quite attached to it.

The oven door clanged shut. Harry stood up, wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of an oven mitt, and turned to face him.

"Happy Christmas," she said, indicating the chaos around them with a broad gesture. She picked up the phone and checked the screen.

For a moment, she smiled. Then she put the phone down, and that pinched and anxious look returned.

"Harry," said John. "Are you all right? Was it bad news?"

"Bad news?" Harry said. "No, no. Best thing that could have happened. A true Christmas miracle." She tried for a smile. "Too bad Donna won't make it. But frankly that makes the table arrangements easier."

"All right," said John. "So what's the matter then, really?"

Harry took off the oven mitt and set it down thoughtfully on the counter.

"Nobody can predict the future, of course," she said. "But...I have this very strong...presentiment...that this will be our last Christmas together. All of us, like this."

Ever since she'd hired that new secretary, Harry had been a little strange. Well, stranger than usual. 

"I have these dreams," Harry went on. "I know it'll sound mad. But in the dreams...everything is different. Mary's alive, and you're living with her, and Sherlock is dead, or sometimes he's alive, but you're not together, and we still hate each other...and I'm...someone else. Someone I don't like much."

She was genuinely distressed. John was a bit distressed himself, though for different reasons.

"But it's just a dream, Harry," he said. "As much as we both wish Mary could be alive--"

Harry shook her head. "I can't explain it. I just--I have this feeling that everything I am, everything I've done, could all be erased at any moment. I could go from being...who I am...to being just a bad joke."

"Come on, Harry," John said. "What about the blog? You'll always be up there, just as you are. For all to see."

That almost made her smile.

"Thanks," she said. "I mean it. Thanks for putting me in it. It's a pain sometimes but I'm glad to have the record."

Harry noticed it first. The buzz of conversation in the living room had died. Sherlock was hushing everyone. Because from the hallway outside there was a low, insistent humming noise, getting louder and louder, and a strange flashing light came in through the crack under the front door.

"Oh Lord have mercy," Harry muttered.

There was a whining sound and a blue light, and the front door flew open. Into the room bounded Harry's new secretary; and next to her, a tall skinny man in a brown pinstripe suit.

"Hello," said the man cheerfully. "I'm the Doctor. So is she. Well. Forty percent of her."

"Call me Donna," said Harry's secretary. "Listen, I don't mean to crash the party, but we did think you ought to know about the cybermen."

"Cybermen?" Sherlock demanded.

"Yeah," said the man in the brown suit. "Those big metal heads and hands and things that you found in that subterranean base that you found last week and had filled in with cement?"

"The eco-terrorists," Sherlock replied.

"No," said Donna. "No, they're cybermen. Big metal robots powered by human brains."

"Good job finding them," said the man in the brown suit, "and thanks for rendering Conversion Base Alpha Terra Nine unusable buuuuut...it does mean they're just a tiny bit angry with you. Well. Not angry, exactly. Cybermen have no emotions."

Lestrade turned to Sherlock. "You ought to get on famously."

"Robots powered by human brains," Sherlock said, contemptuously. "The technology for that does not exist. It's impossible."

Donna and the man in the brown suit looked at each other and smiled, briefly. From outside in the street, the tramp of metal feet became audible.

"Impossible or not," Donna said, "they've decided that if this comeback scheme of theirs is going to work at all, they'll have to convert Sherlock first."

"Christ!" Harry shouted. "If they get a hold of  _his_ brain humanity is screwed for good."

"Harry makes a good point," said the man in the brown suit. "TARDIS is right in the hallway. Room enough at the inn for everyone."

The man in the brown suit and Donna disappeared. Harry began herding everyone toward the exit. 

"Come on!" she shouted. "Don't worry about it, Molly, it's bigger on the inside. Lestrade, help Mrs. Hudson. Don't wait for it to make sense, Sherlock, just GO! All aboard! VAMONOS!"

John hesitated in the doorway. He didn't like the fact that what he saw on the other side couldn't make sense. But Sherlock was already crawling along the floor of that thing, bathed in amber light, inspecting it with the glass. Harry gave him a push. She jumped in behind him. A pair of blue doors snapped shut. Donna stood by the console.

"Everyone's in!" shouted the man in the brown suit.

"All right then," Donna shouted. "Fasten your seatbelts! It's going to be a bumpy ride!"

Donna threw the biggest switch John had ever seen outside of a _Frankenstein_ film. The whole room started to rattle.

John lurched, almost fell, and caught himself on the railing. He helped Harry up. She'd lost that worried look. Maybe, he thought, forever.

"Presentiments," she said. "Dreams. What does it matter?" Harry smiled at him. "There's always another universe, isn't there?"

THE END

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Day of the Doctor" has, of course, eternally messed up the Time War and the characterization of Nine and Ten. I elected to write the Doctor's POV as if the destruction of Gallifrey has actually happened and he remembers doing it. That's because I think it makes more sense to engage with the first seven seasons based on the ground rules that existed then than to worry about being consistent with Moffat's craziness. Moffat never gave a damn about being consistent with, say, logic.
> 
> "The miracle of miracles" is a reference to Ibsen's _A Doll's House._ The Doctor's fight with Donna in Harry's living room is sort of an homage to the famous "discussion scene" between Nora and her husband in _A Doll's House._ At the end of ADH, Nora walks out on her husband. He asks if she's ever coming back. She says "only by a miracle of miracles." He asks her what miracle that would be; she says they would both have to change until it was possible for them to have a real marriage. In "Recovery," the miracle of miracles is the Doctor understanding why it is that what he did to Donna was wrong. Soon as that happens, the light bulb (literally) goes on, and the reunion can take place. 
> 
> The song Donna's listening to when she gets triggered is Dar Williams's "This Was Pompeii." Let me take a moment to share what writing this story revealed to me about some of the problems with this mindwipe thing from a coherence point of view:
> 
> Davies is inconsistent about how Donna’s mindwipe actually works. So inconsistent that it was hard to figure out how to write the recovery process in a way that made sense. The Doctor’s rationale for doing this in the first place is that he essentially has to seal the Time Lord consciousness off from the rest of her brain so her brain doesn’t burn up from the overload. The mind-wipe is done because the Doctor believes that if her brain thinks about him and their times together _at all_ the seal will break and the Time Lord consciousness will get out of its box and try to integrate with the rest of her brain, thus burning it up and killing her. This is why he stresses to Sylvia and Wilfred that they can never talk to Donna about what she did while she was with the Doctor, or mention him, or any of that.
> 
> Sylvia says, in her best moment ever, that this plan is absolute bullshit. As she points out, the entire world is talking about the 26 planets in the sky thing. How exactly are they keep Donna from hearing about it and being reminded of him? The Doctor says, “It’ll just be a story. One of those Donna Noble stories where she missed the ball again.”
> 
> So…all right. She can hear about the 26 planets with no ill effects as long as she goes on believing that it didn’t happen and she had nothing to do with it. Perhaps the point of removing her memories of the Doctor was to make it impossible for her to make the link between a story like the 26 planets and her own experience. All right, seems a little bullshitty but RTD gave us four good seasons so we’ll give him a pass for right now.
> 
> Then Donna shows up, introduces herself to the Doctor as if he’s never met her, and says goodbye to him in the kitchen later. No ill effects.
> 
> Why doesn’t the Doctor…you know…remind her of the Doctor?
> 
> Well, the real reason is that they want us to have the pain of watching her forget him. Yes. That was painful, thanks. But tell me. If talking to the actual Doctor isn’t going to trigger the TLC explosion, what ever could? Why would hearing about the Doctor from Sylvia and Wilf be any more triggering than actually hearing his voice and looking at his face?
> 
> For the story it was necessary to figure out a way for the memories to be triggered. Since I’m pretending “End of Time” never happened (because it will only make the not making sense worse) that was no help. I ended up deciding that what would trigger the release of her memories and thus the TLC was not direct references to these events, but experiences that would recapitulate them emotionally. This is sort of consistent- with the way Amy Pond’s “remembering” of the Doctor and Rory works at the end of Season 5. (Because my take on Amy is that she is basically a reboot of Donna, but that’s another story for another time.) The tipping point comes after the events have brought up up enough emotion memories to break the barrier. 
> 
> That's where the song comes in. "This Was Pompeii" is deliberately anachronistic; it's really a song about the end of a relationship, and the destruction of Pompeii is just a metaphor for it. The images themselves are one kind of trigger; but the song provides the necessary emotional trigger by 'reminding' Donna not only of her grief over Pompeii but her grief about the end of her relationship with the Doctor.
> 
> Happy Holidays, everyone! See you in the new year!


End file.
